Writing with Baby. The Plan.

Apparently, when you’re pregnant, everybody in the entire world who’s already had kids develops a need to warn you in urgent, wide-eyed tones that “you won’t know what’s hit you, once the baby comes.”

So being a new parent isn’t scary or anything then, I take it. Judging by the hushed tones of the warning-deliverers, who all speak in low, tentative voices as if they’re trying to avoid triggering flashbacks, war-veteran style.

Hey, I’m not exaggerating at all, I promise. Lots of different people at different times have said such to me. Just as the childless friends of mine can never resist the opportunity to point out every baby or child crying in public and state ‘that’s your future’, as if I didn’t know babies cried or toddlers chucked tantrums.

Gee, really? Is it too late to send it back?

But obvious sarcasm and cheap jibes aside, I don’t doubt any of them. I’m not stupid. The world as I know it will change come early February. That much, we know.

It’s only that if all the warnings can’t help prepare me for the reality of having a new baby – as those delivering the warnings suggest – then just what are they meant to achieve?

The pleasure of bursting my bubble of blissful ignorance?

Ha, bad luck there, kiddies. I can maintain a state of blissful ignorance with the determination of a tom-cat refusing to give up a recently caught rat, growling from the back of the throat while holding the bloodied carcass in my teeth, and all.

Anyway. The big Unknown Factor about after the baby comes is exactly what impact it’s going to have on my writing. Because call me Susan and spin me sideways, but I’m pretty confident that it will have at least some impact. You’d think so, don’t you?

These last twelve months or so I’ve dedicated to getting fiction published. Which means I’ve started to develop a lovely, growing collection of rejections. Ah, bless. But only real writers get rejections, I’ll have you know, and I’ve also made a good start with a nice handful of pieces accepted for publication. I’m sitting at about a 50/50 acceptance-rejection ratio, at the moment. Not bad for a chick who works full time, studies part time, co-runs a busy photography & videography business, and who only began aiming at fiction publication just a little over a year ago.

2012 should be a year of growing the number of publishing acceptances. And the rejections too, of course, because they’re all part of it too.

Only I’m not sure that babies take concepts like regular, every-day writing time too seriously, ummm.

And if there’s one thing pregnancy has taught me, is that it’s really difficult to create when you’re exhausted to the point you’re wandering around like a zombie with a sinus infection.

Soooooo…

Who knows what 2012 will produce. Except a baby. And sleep deprivation. Still, I do have A Plan. Yes, with capitals. It’s all part of my ‘And here’s something I prepared earlier…’ strategy. I have a bunch of developed drafts ready for editing and a handful of stories yet to be sent out, biting at the bit, waiting for me to set off the starter gun and shoot them out into the world.

Not to mention a bunch more metaphors just waiting to be mangled in my spare time.

And if there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that the words will keep flowing, one way or another. I’ve never managed to find a way to turn them off yet, after all.

That’s The Plan for Writing With Baby.

So come on baby, hit me, I can take it.

(Now let’s watch the little chap come along and blow it completely out of the water…)

K.

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